As a college student over 20 years ago I remember entering discussions about the validity of cross-cultural ministry/missions in the US versus missions abroad. There were actual debates ranging from the need, finances, strategy and on and on. Fast forward 20 years and I would have never predicted that 13 of the 18 years that we have served in mission would be among immigrants in the United States. I could have never predicted how living in the city, meeting refugees, and entering a sub-culture that few know about would change my life.
Lately, I have chatted with many people in this remarkably diverse new context we are in and there remains a great misunderstanding on what the mission of God was sent to do. Many have heard of our 5 years of overseas missions experience and cheered in praise. It has felt in many ways that living on the other side of the ocean somehow validates missions training and mentoring. While I have no qualms about how much those years formed us, grew us, and gave us perspective, it still feels like the Church continues to misunderstand missions at home. Real missions are abroad. Missions on our shores still feels second rate, even in the eyes of people who serve full-time in that context. Something must change.
The United States ranks high every single year in the world’s population of having the most unreached people groups within our borders. Countries that are completely shielded off, even closed to foreigners taking the Gospel there now have many of its nationals making their homes in Western cities. I have gone days, even weeks without speaking English in some of the places where we have lived in the US. This could be said of many of my colleagues. Amos’s two best friends right now are kids that have only a few words of English. Amos warns the kids that a car is coming by shouting out the word “car” either in Nepali or Tigrinya. My son remains the only Caucasian kid in our entire apartment complex of nearly 1000 people. Almost every single place to shop in our small town of Clarkston is operated by people who were born outside of the US.
I have lived in cities in the Philippines and Nepal where expats have created the most monocultural experience for themselves that you could ever imagine. This is not the norm for many, but some spend their entire careers operating in English, basing among people from their host country, and their engagement with those from the country they have been sent to are far outside of their daily routine. Just because you live on the other side of the ocean does not necessarily mean that you are doing cross-cultural work. Just because you stay within your own borders does not necessarily mean that life and ministry is linguistically or culturally more similar.
I get that drowning oneself in cross-cultural relationships in the US like my family has is probably an extreme example. So too is the example of expat and missionary ghettos. The bottom line is that the comparison game is foolishness. There is an issue of resourcing – where do we send people? Where do we send money? But this is not an either-or answer. Both and must be our answer and I wonder at what point we as the body of Christ will eventually slay this dichotomy and get on with the mission of Jesus?
Jesus stood eyeball to eyeball with the disciples and told them to go into all the world and make disciples. He instructed them to go to every people group. He promised in Acts 1 that His followers would receive power and be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. God designs and orders the times and places where people will live so that they will reach out for Him and find Him (Acts 17 paraphrase). The US, abroad, on an airplane in between those two places – the mission of God is the same. May we obey Scripture, immerse ourselves in the people groups around us, and see all nations gathered around the throne worshipping Jesus. All nations, all languages, crying out to Jesus, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and unto the Lamb.” It will not matter on that day whether that voice comes from a Nepali from Atlanta or Kathmandu, an Afghan from Syracuse, London, or Kabul. Somalis from Mogadishu or Minneapolis will be around that throne. Let us get on with it already from the East to the West and put our hands in the pile together preaching the Good News of the Kingdom that the day of liberation is here (Luke 4).
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